Relationship Marketing – Leveraging on Supplier Relationships
Business today has become customer centric. Organizations are investing heavily into getting to know and building a relationship with the customer in order to retain the customer and extend the relationship. Use of technology and CRM tools, Organizations are able to customise communication to individual customers and target specific customer segments to focus upon. As […]
Methods and Tools for Customer Retention
Following are some important methods and tools for customer retention: Data sources and databases for retention: An important aspect for an organization is to think what should be the reasons that enhance repeat purchase. On paper it is not possible to make definite strategies to increase customer retention. Hence, retention databases are created to have […]
What is Brand Promise? – Mistakes to Avoid While Building it
Brand evokes the responses. There are many people who love their Apple iPod or love their car etc. There are certain feelings that come to your mind when you think about your favorite brands. People expect that these brands should demonstrate brand promises every time whenever they are, encountered. Inconsistencies in the performance of services […]
How to Maintain Competitive Edge in Service Industry
In the present times, doing business has become an extremely competitive game. This is true not only for the product industry but to the service industries as well. In case of service industry, the competition to be at the top and be the market leader is tougher simply because of the fact that service is […]
Managing Retailing, Wholesaling and Market Logistics
Companies are looking forward to moving away from the conventional supply chain and moving towards value network. In a value network traditional supplier-wholesaler-retailer are considered as partners rather than as a customer. Companies designing marketing channel under the value network principle need to understand the players, role and their importance. Retailing The act through which […]
No one would have ever imagined fifty years ago that the service sector would become a major contributor to the economy world over. Surprising but true, that in America as well as in India or in UK, service industry has grown beyond our imagination and continues to grow. Globalization and the advancement of technology has brought about a revolution in all of the service sectors be it hotel, airline or in software services. In fact service sector today employs the highest number of semi skilled and skilled manpower resources all over the world.
When you think of service, the picture that easily comes to your mind could be the McDonalds or Pizza-hut or the next best picture would be that of an airline. Our life has been made easier thanks to the service industry. Customers are pampered with the best quality service making them demand more and more in terms of quality of services.
Services as we all know offers intangibles and can be qualified through the experience delivered to the customer. Service industry in the past few years has gone places. Automation and technology have helped standardize and bring in efficiency in service. Service Organizations not only excel in offering timely and standardized service, they have gone one step ahead in offering personalized service to the customers too. Today every customer is recognized individually by the hotel or the airline he visits. The hotel knows the customer’s preferences and likes and are prepared to give him the best of customized service and engaging him in a relationship.
In a bid to offer the best of customized services and maintain the market share, service organizations have aggressively pursued various strategies internally. From Business process re-engineering, standard operating procedures, outsourcing and quality programs as well as all of the operational efficiency programs have been adopted and pursued aggressively in order to deliver faster and cheaper customer service performance. In the bargain to stay ahead of competition and increase their sales revenues, the companies have pursued marketing strategies more akin to that of product companies. The question that each of the companies have to ask themselves today is whether all of these have helped them become ‘Market Leaders’. Companies may be operationally efficient and give the best service at the best price, but that hardly gives them the competitive edge over the others to lead the pack.
Take the case of Southwest airlines and Bank of America who have looked different from their competitors in their respective segments. Bank of America literally monopolized the American market with their fastest processing and delivery times for credit cards along with the best of customer service. South west airline managed to position themselves differently from the rest of the airlines in terms of value for money and no frills flying. While the rest of the competitors spent thousands of dollars in re-engineering processes and bringing in operational efficiencies to become profitable, this airline simply positioned itself differently.
What makes Southwest airlines as well as the other market leaders such as Wal-Mart, IKEA and Mc-Donald’s is that they look at doing their business differently from the rest of the competition. When service offering is duplicated easily and every competitor is able to offer the same service at cheaper cost, it calls for service companies to think differently in order to retain their market leadership.
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